The Empire
Overview The Phytotic Empire, or simply "The Empire" is an ancient ruling force ruling the Solar System from 4,000,000 BCE to 3,950,000 BCE. During what was called the Hadean, Lith, Meso, Neo, and Axial eras, The Empire created great technologies such as Terraforming, space travel, and created architectural marvels. They favored gold, ivory, silver, and turquoise in their buildings, starships, and weapons. Despite the golden and high-tech facade, the Empire is an abhorrently cruel and uncaring regime. They built their empire on the backs of slaves, working many to death, and killing many more. Culture Morals The Empire values beauty, excess, splendor, and luxury. They use tall ceilings and doors, wide halls, expansive atriums, and soaring towers. Although they decorate their buildings lavishly of gold, silver, and luminescence, they value simplicity, sleek and organic design. This results in a simple-but-elegant design. They have a strong warrior-culture, their cities are well-fortified and use Sentries as a large disposal force of soldiers ready to dispatch rebels and political enemies. This warrior culture is incorporated into every aspect of their daily life, in their clothing, education, and architecture. They have little ethics to speak of. Slaves are exploited liberally for expansive building projects as seen fit. If an experiment requires a human to die, The Empire will have no qualms allowing them to die. Most slave clades survive to a maximum of 50 years before being worked to death despite being immortal. 75 years is considered "old" for a slave, despite most inhabitants being 30,000-50,000 years old. They have a cruel policy for population control. Shall a person reach their 100,000th birthday, they are killed within a large atrium by Executrix Alys, higher Clades are exempt from such awful treatment. Their bones are used to create the lavish bone-ivory used in construction, weaponry, and clothing. There are no defined gender roles, as there is no sexual reproduction in the traditional sense. All reproduction occurs in gestation bags, so women do not require long maternity leave. Torture is very common for rebels, the most common forms of torture include Scaphism and Blood Eagle among with many more. If a rebel is caught, they can at least expect lesser forms of physical torture such as beatings, flogging, and hot or molten metal before their eventual scaphism or blood eagle, usually done on the planet Eris. Hierarchy The Empire is very stratified into a caste system. Each different Clade is genetically different from eachother. The highest clade would be an Emperor, the ruler of the entire Empire. The next clade is an Executor, or an Executrix if said person is female. There are multiple ranks of Executor: System Rulers, Planetary Rulers, Moon Rulers, Angelic Rulers, and some rule over not physical locations, but scientific aspects such as the Enginus rank. The next clade is a Praetorian, the most elite class of soldier. Ranks can include Clavius, Legatius, Centurion, and the lowest rank: Primus. The lowest of the free clades are the Sectarus, minor nobles such as merchants, clergy, traders, and people presiding over manufacturing and mining operations. The lower classes are the regular humans, citizens of the old nations which were taken under the Empire. And even lower than that are the slaves made of a special infection strain called Helminth. Clothing Empyrean clothing, that is clothing worn by the elite, is usually very lavish, being made of a high-quality vulcanized plastic alloy, although this plastic is biologically-grown and is closer to fine silk and cashmere than nylon. It does not decay. Most clothing is gilded with gold plates and embroidery, glowing orbs may be implanted within the gold. More formal wear may be made of helmets, chestplates, greaves, boots, and gauntlets comprised of ivory and gold which reflects the Empire's warrior culture. Casual wear is usually gilded with gold and long and flowing. They are long-sleeved and flowing, but fit for battle which again reflects their strong warrior culture. Cuisine As traditional farming is seen as "primitive" and "barbaric", the Empire farms within massive vertical farming complexes. Fruits and vegetables are grown, along with cultured meat rich with fats and proteins. As with the lack of ethics, most food is highly genetically modified although modification methods are more efficient than present-day technology. Most dishes resemble real-life dishes such as Sentry cutlet resembling gefilte fish, Ichrain resembling sushi, and such. Technology The Empire values technology. As such, they have an emperor; Emperor Baraquiel, embodying the value of technology. They have the ability to terraform planets, turning the burning Venus, and the lifeless Moon, Mercury, and Mars into inviting safehouses. Every planet, moon, and Centaur was terraformed. They are capable of efficient space travel, with their fastest spacecraft reaching 75% of the speed of light. They are also capable of faster-than-light travel, using Nexus Links to travel interplanetary distances, and Dark Links to travel interstellar distances. Their artist and warrior culture combined with their weapon technology. Most weapons were disturbingly strong, the recoil would kill the user provided they do not have any shock absorption. Along with those technologies, they had more basic but impressive technologies such as mining excavators, floating gas giant cities, ringworlds (while not many were built), and underwater cities. Their most disturbing technology was the Infection, it was used to augment slaves, creating the Slave Clades, which proved too powerful, leading to the downfall of the Solar System.